


and i'll use you as a warning sign

by ddullahan



Series: RWBY Character Study [3]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Bilingual Blake!!!!, Blake Belladonna Needs a Hug, Character Study, F/F, Past Blake Belladonna/Adam Taurus, Time Skips, Volume 5 (RWBY), Worldbuilding, brought to you by the hit single 'how many times can the author misspell Blake in 3000 words', it was so bad before i edited it y'all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:06:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24436351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ddullahan/pseuds/ddullahan
Summary: in the age old struggle of light and darkit is here that we must make our mark.to thither and wither these ancient lies -let us love as if we plan to die.One-shot character study of Blake during Vol 5 because she's BI MY DUDES
Relationships: Blake Belladonna/Yang Xiao Long
Series: RWBY Character Study [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1615261
Comments: 10
Kudos: 51





	and i'll use you as a warning sign

**Author's Note:**

> HELOO I'm alive!!
> 
> I got really inspired by a specific thought I had about Blake and then just under 3000 words and a Rather Large margarita later, this happened. All of the poems in this series are mine, if anyone was curious lol
> 
> Anyway, this is kinda all over the place, but you can tear bilingual Blake from my cold dead hands and that's that on that. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!! Kudos and comments are greatly appreciated, and if you're new to my works, this can be read as a stand alone as well - however it does kinda tie into my Ruby and Weiss one-shots :> I hope this fic finds y'all in good health, please be safe and as always, don't forget to love each other <3

* * *

Darkness has its own name in Menagerie.

It's hard to pronounce in Remnant's common tongue, but it roughly translates to _'the yawning evil'_. Originally used to describe the black that chased them all. To Blake, it held a deeper meaning.

The word is specific to Menagerie because the language for darkness, grimm, and human, all carry the same root word. To the inhabitants of her old home, all of these had the same potential for evil. For cruelty.

It made her think of the history of the faunus, of her ancestors in cages and the years of rage and oppression handed down through stories. It made her think of the building blocks of societies, and a language shaped by oppression.

It made her think of Adam, most of all. Because in reality, she understood him. She was him, once upon a time. All of his rage and ugliness, scars left behind by cruel hands. Some would say her empathy was a liability, but liabilities were gateways to strength. In some ways. 

Blake had never given her native tongue much thought before Adam. 

Her parents had stopped using it in the house after her father started the White Fang. He needed to learn the common tongue to get their message across, and forcing himself to speak it all the time helped. Blake became bilingual by proxy, as children were sponges and her mother had placed sticky notes in the common tongue all around their house. She still thought of the fluorescent sticky note next to the toilet lid labeled 'hole for the butt'.

Yang had nearly fallen off the edge of Beacon cliff when she told her about it; laughing so hard tears dripped over the constellations on her reddened cheeks. 

Blake had laughed too, then. Breathless and wondering at the sheer joy one person could release all at once. Heart sputtering because Yang chose to share her light with something like her. A beast that chased darkness just because it was easy on the eyes.

Her team at Beacon was nothing like Adam, and everything Blake needed to move on from him. Everything she needed to stop chasing the darkness. It gave her hope that maybe she’d be able to go home and greet her parents eventually, proud of who she'd become. Both as a Huntress, and - only at night alone with her thoughts - accompanied by a beautiful girl so full of joy and laughter that she drew to her the faces of sunflowers.

It was the perfect dream. The perfect goal.

Until her past caught up, and everything came screaming back to her.

She returned to her parents with a different sun. It was bittersweet for a while, but deep down she appreciated the company. The week's long voyage where he stayed out of sight had been...trying. A manic part of her was worried that she'd have to scrape herself out of the ocean, so she gave the abyss something precious as penance. A bottle cap, love-worn and scratched. Lost to the sea, just as she was lost in old regrets and memories. 

….

Adam never spoke in the common tongue unless he needed to get business done. It made him seem like a man of few words to most, but behind closed doors, his madness grew. 

Blake had been the only witness.

He would pace the floor of their tent as if the canvas were made of iron bars, going off on tangents about humanity's primitive language and rotten fruit under a snowflake logo. Superiority reeked from his pores, but Blake was only fifteen. She kept her opinions to herself. It was better that way. She didn't want to upset him.

She was only in love, after all.

He pleaded with her to stay when the madness became too much, so he must love her the same. He wouldn't want her around if he didn't love her. Adam needed her the same way she needed him.

But still, his words were caustic; sizzling and dripping with hatred so vile not even her ache for love could excuse it. 

She still had to listen to him, because now it was a game. Her body knew the danger, even if her head was steeped in rosewater. Adam would quiz her on his own rants, and she answered with the thrum of survival pounding in her ears. She didn't know what would have happened if she got an answer wrong; she never took that chance.

It was after the first time he screamed at her in their native tongue that Blake came to dislike her own language. He'd butchered phrases she once loved so dearly, tainting their meanings in nothing but the yawning evil and she wondered why his name wasn't a color. Did his parents know he wouldn't saturate the world in warm colors? Did they know what kind of man he'd become? Or did they know him at all?

He only talked to her with those spitting, cutting words. He never spoke to her in anything else. Superior language, superior beings, he'd said. He promised they would rule the world together, side by side.

She'd smiled and nodded then, because that's what survivors do.

But here, under a sky flecked with stars and the peace of it drowned in roaring engines, she had no fear for survival.

Only anticipation.

Sun fidgeted beside her, his fuzzy yellow tail tangling itself in her long hair before slithering away to twitch against their thighs. He fiddled with his bow staff and flicked the safety on and off, humming a tune.

Meanwhile, Blake's muscles were locked so tightly, not even the slight turbulence they hit could shake her free. 

"Dude if you clench any tighter you're gonna turn to stone." Sun said.

"Relax Sun, she's just thinking." Ilia hummed from across the helicarrier, leaning forward towards Blake. "You _are_ just thinking, right? You’re not spontaneously paralyzed and unable to ask for help?"

Blake glanced up at her, unamused. 

Ilia's eyes shifted to match Blake's shade, exaggerating, "Blink twice if you can't move."

Fighting down the urge to smile, Blake kept her deadpan expression and slowly blinked once. 

Ilia threw up her hands, the freckles on her shoulder turning bright yellow. "She's alive!"

Unable to keep her features in check, Blake let out a quiet laugh and swatted at Ilia's knee. "You're a jerk."

"But you still let me into your club."

"A civil rights movement isn't a club Ilia."

"Um I beg to differ. We have a logo, we have a cool name. We even have a meeting hall and planned events."

"She's got a point." Sun added unhelpfully.

Blake snorted and rolled her eyes to the ceiling, sitting back in her seat. Her back cracked in a symphony as she unwound herself from hunching over her knees. The back of her head hit the metal gently, her eyes closing as she counted her breaths. They were so close to Haven. 

To Adam.

Her fists clenched into the leather of her pants to stop from shaking, swallowing against a bout of nausea. Anticipation came with a fair amount of nerves, she reasoned with herself. She knew deep in her heart that she was done running - it was time for her to fight back. Against him, and the power he held over people looking to make a difference. He needed to be stopped.

Even still, her instincts begged her not to fight the man she'd been afraid of for so very long. Who'd taken her from her parents at thirteen, groomed her till seventeen, and expected her to stay forever. 

_Survive,_ those instincts wheezed. As if she didn't have hundreds of faunus making their way to Haven Academy with her. As if she wasn't starting a new movement to _live_ , with help.

Baffling as it was, her old fears seemed to think Adam was a monolithic evil, instead of a lost boy too caught up in his own spite of the world. She kind of hated how much she understood him. How easy it would have been to just label him as a curse and leave it at that. If only life could be so black and white.

She felt a shift to her right, Sun's blue eyes soft as cotton and full of worry.

"You doin' okay Blake?"

"..Yeah." She breathed, swallowing dryly. "Just...nervous I guess."

"For?"

"Uh, everything?" Blake ran her hands up through her bangs and brushed against her ears, the different textures of hair versus fur as familiar as breathing. "What if he knows we're coming?"

Ilia slunk across the divide and into the seat on her left, taking her hand boldly. 

"You and I both know he doesn't see you as a valid threat." She said softly, the rasp in her voice wine dark and just as soothing. "You're just the toy that was taken away from him. He won't expect this, not in a million years."

Blake shifted uneasily, but Sun pressed into her side to keep her steady. His broad frame radiated warmth in an aching, familiar way that she couldn't help but sink into. 

"Yeah, you don't talk about this Adam guy much, but he seems like a bitch." The monkey faunus said, his head lolling onto hers and nearly flattening one of her ears.

Blake and Ilia burst into surprised laughter, Blake using her free hand to push him off playfully. He grinned at them, preening from their giggles.

Ilia bumped their shoulders together, stoking the warmth in Blake's chest. "He _is_ a bitch. You should've seen the tantrum he made when Sienna wouldn't let him go after you."

Ilia's skin shifted into red and black stripes, her back stiffening with authority. "'We have bigger things to worry about than one defector, Mr. Taurus.' Oh he was _so_ mad."

Blake chuckled softly, glancing down at her and Ilia's hands. The chameleon's skin rippled back to her normal shade, contrasting the olive hue of Blake’s own fingers.

Maybe it was the impulse to be heard without the threat of context, or the desire to speak the acidity in her heart without harming someone. It hit her then that neither of her friends could speak Menagerie's language. Sun was from Vacuo, Ilia from Mantle. They wouldn't have been exposed to it. 

_"I'm afraid that this won't be enough to redeem myself."_ Blake said suddenly, switching to the lilting hum of her native tongue. 

The pair had completely blank looks, and Blake felt emboldened by their lack of response. It was just the three of them in the body of the ship, her parents were up front with the Haven police and pilot. There would be no better time to lay out her worries. Even if they couldn't understand it.

_"I'm afraid I won't be able to go back to my team until he's dead. Until the faunus are free. I don't know how to make up for leaving them, or I'll ever be able to. I love them more than I've loved anyone, what if they don't accept me back?"_ Her breath had gone all shuddery, but she pressed on, tightening her grip on Ilia's hand. _"What if… what if she doesn't want me back?"_

Ilia squeezed her hand so tightly that Blake felt her bones creak under the strain. It was grounding, that slight mote of pain flickering in and out of her senses.

_"She'd be a fool not to."_ Came a wine dark rasp, nothing but warmth and support lying behind the stilted, learned words.

Blake startled enough to snatch her hand away, leaning into Sun as she took in Ilia's entire form with surprise.

_"You understood me?"_ She breathed, unable to decide if she was horrified, or relieved.

_"Adam only gave orders in this, I had to learn quick."_ Ilia said wryly, though her freckles had turned pink. _"I...also wanted to get to know you better. I thought becoming bilingual would help."_

Blake's words had left her, funnily enough. Thankfully, Sun jumped in.

"So like, this is really neat stuff but also, I have no idea what you're saying and it sounds like a lot. Mind cluin' a guy in here?"

“Only if she wants to talk about it.” Ilia said, tilting her head to Blake kindly. 

Her lower lip stung as one of her fangs sunk into it, a bit of blood seeping onto her tongue. She licked at it absently and curled a knee to her chest, wrapping her arms and resting her chin against it. The hum of the engines rattled the cables woven across the ceiling. Mountains painted with vegetation slowly drifted past the open bay doors, the waning sunlight casting long shadows over verdant rivers and valleys below. 

Blake heaved a quiet sigh, shifting till her cheekbone pressed against the leather of her pants. 

“I just...don’t want them to hate me for leaving.” She murmured, trying not to let her lower lip tremble like it wanted to. “I...I needed to leave. If I hadn’t, we wouldn’t be here - Menagerie wouldn’t know what a threat Adam is. But I regret the way I handled it. I shouldn’t have just… I should’ve stayed to see if she - if they were all okay first.” Tears flooded her view of Sun’s tail drawing circles in the air, heat building in her cheeks as she hunched her shoulders; pressing into her knee like it could hide her from her mistakes. 

Ilia rested a hand on her shoulder blade, thumb swiping across Blake’s coat with gentle pressure. Sun’s large palm fit onto her other knee, his warmth seeping into the leather. 

“The way you left was rough, not gonna lie.” Sun said, the usual shrillness of his voice softened with care. “I honestly don’t know how the others will react, and I can’t say they’d be wrong for being mad at you.”

“That’s not what I mean -” Blake said sharply, quickly inhaling deeply to calm herself. She started again, quieter. “I deserve their anger. I need to own up to my mistakes and I _know_ that. I just…” 

She shuddered, the force of her feelings rocking through her entire body like a tidal wave. Tears dripped down her cheeks unchecked. Her words came out grated, as if scraping against her vocal chords before releasing into the world.

“I just hope they’ll give me a chance to _fix_ them.”

Sun and Ilia exchanged a look over her head, but she didn’t care too much about it. She took her sleeve and scrubbed roughly at her cheeks, sniffling softly. Waiting for the moment when shame would curl and wither away, drop its leaves into the hollow of her chest. Left to rest with the others. 

But the moment never came. 

Perhaps that was a testament to her own healing. Actually allowing herself to feel things, rather than pushing them aside to support someone else. 

“If I know anything about your team,” Sun said slowly, tilting his head to the side, “it’s that you guys never give up on anything. Like, ever. It’s pretty awesome.” He gave a bit of a grin, a dimple popping into his cheek. “I don’t think they’d start now. Especially not with you. They love you dude. S’kinda obvious.”

Blake flushed to the tips of her human ears, feeling their burn acutely beneath the weight of her hair. She sniffed again, melting back into her seat, her spine feeling liquid and warm. She brushed her cheek with her sleeve again and bumped shoulders with Sun, a wobbly smile curling on her lips. 

“You’re not half bad at this reassuring stuff.” She murmured fondly, gold eyes flicking to Ilia on her left. “Both of you. Thank you. For… for everything.”

Ilia let out a laugh, though it was suspiciously thick as she blinked a few too many times. “I don’t even need to tell you how unnecessary a thanks is from you.”

“Too bad, you’re getting one anyway.” Blake said, swaying into Ilia’s side and letting her feline ear thwack against her cheek. “I’m glad you decided to join the cool kids of the revolution.” Ilia huffed, her freckles and eyes seeping into bright pink. 

“Me too.” She replied quietly.

The airship shuddered as it started to descend, and the hulking, hunched form of her father filled the entire stairwell. 

“We’re landing in a few minutes kids,” Ghira said, the ship shuddering again beneath their feet. “The sun’s about to set as well. If the White Fang make a move tonight, they’re going to take advantage of the dark. I need sharp eyes from all of you.”

“We know, dad.” Blake reluctantly peeled herself away from Ilia and Sun and rising to her feet. 

It was strange. She could feel the pull in her legs, each tendon stretching to accommodate her motion. Her body was made of solid, firm muscle. She _felt_ strong. 

As unknown as the next few hours would be, Blake knew without a spark of doubt that she was ready to face him. The curse on her life, the separation between her childhood and youth. She knew she could look him in the eye and tell him to stand down. Haven would stand tall by morning’s light. She would personally make sure of it.

She locked eyes with Ilia and Sun, the pair standing nearly in tandem. One gave her a sunny grin, the other a firm nod. Blake smiled, the corner of her fang poking the wound she’d bit into before, healed by her aura. 

“We’re ready.” She said, the last of the sun’s rays winking out from the pillars of mountains around them. 

  
Darkness had many meanings in the language of Menagerie. Roughly translated, it meant _‘the yawning evil’_. Equated to the creatures of grimm, and the unknown source of their monstrous nature. And, equally used by the people of Menagerie, as a way to describe the crippling precipice of doubt. Something Blake and her team would all become acquainted with, sooner, rather than later.  
  
A story for another time, perhaps.

**Author's Note:**

> Like my shit? Say hi over on my kofi! I post mainly poems and occasionally a short story or two, but any and all visits are welcome!  
> https://ko-fi.com/ddullahan
> 
> Also feel free to scream at me on tumblr @ ddullahan I love talking with y'all, it makes my day :D


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